Worldwide PC shipment has decreased by 10.9% to 76 million units in the second quarter of 2013, compared to the corresponding period last year, according to a report from Gartner.
The quarter marks fifth consecutive quarter of decline in shipments, mainly due to the drop from all the regions and also the changes made in the installed base for the adoption of tablets as the primary consumption device.
Lenovo led the worldwide PC shipment market with 16.7% share, followed by HP with 16.3% share, while Dell and Acer remained in third and fourth positions with 11.8% and 8.3% shares respectively.
Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said that the PC market reduction is directly tied to the shrinking installed base of PCs, as inexpensive tablets displace the low-end machines used primarily for consumption in mature and developed markets.
"In emerging markets, inexpensive tablets have become the first computing device for many people, who at best are deferring the purchase of a PC," Kitagawa said.
"This is also accounting for the collapse of the mini notebook market."
During the second quarter, about 15 million PCs were sold in the US, which is a 1.4% drop compared to the same period last year, while Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) experienced 16.8% decline over the same period last year.
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"Our preliminary results indicate that this reduced market decline was attributed to solid growth in the professional market. Three of the major professional PC suppliers, HP, Dell and Lenovo, all registered better than US average growth rate. The end of Windows XP support potentially drove the remaining PC refresh in the US professional market."
In the US, Lenovo led the market growth with 19.7% increase in PC shipments to 1,515,562 units, followed by Dell that experienced 6.4% growth to 3,681,725 units compared to the same period prior year.
Gartner principal research analyst Isabelle Durand said that the sharp decline in the second quarter of 2013 was partly due to the shift in usage patterns away from notebooks to tablets, and partly because the PC market was exposed to inventory reductions in the channel due to the start of the transition to new Haswell-based products.
"Touch-based notebooks still account for less than 10 per cent of the total consumer notebook shipments in the last quarter," Durand added.
"Shipment levels remained weak in Western Europe in the second quarter of 2013 as PC replacement rates continued to be extremely low, while the challenging economic environment is muting spending in consumer markets.
"Shipments in Eastern Europe also remained low as this is typically a quiet quarter for business buyers in the region, and consumers are predominantly looking for Android-based tablets. In the Middle East and Africa, tablet and smartphone adoption also continued to draw demand away from PCs in the second quarter of 2013."
The Asia/Pacific region reported over 26.8 million PC shipments in the second quarter of 2013, an 11.5% decrease compared to the first quarter of 2012.
